What's new

trying to revive ac88u

  • SNBForums Code of Conduct

    SNBForums is a community for everyone, no matter what their level of experience.

    Please be tolerant and patient of others, especially newcomers. We are all here to share and learn!

    The rules are simple: Be patient, be nice, be helpful or be gone!

andresmorago

Senior Member
hello to all

im aware this is a long shot but will appreciate your help.
long story short: a friend gave me an used rt-ac88u (not a AC3100) which had booting issues. i got it back to live with the asus firmware restoration and latest merlin 384.13.
i have read about a lot of these units with hardware issues so im guessing this could be one of them. im doing this just for fun in case there is something else i could do.

both wireless radios behave very strange. 2G would work once in a while, then it dies. same with 5G. Right now, it got to the point that 5G took 2G's place.
when any of the radios is dead, control channel will show a 0 value.
router overall performs ok in terms of software. all services, with the exception of wireless, work ok.

i wanted to share my boot log as well as some screenshots in case anyone could give me more ideas. i have reset it dozens of times, flashed it again and erased nvram properly. all of them show different results but at the end, radios behave erratically.
i see a uart port on each BCM4366 wireless chip. is there anything i could do there.
one more thing i see once in a while is that Driver version under Tools_Sysinfo.asp will appear blank.

boot log (too long to post it here)
https://pastebin.com/8ev1WrHd

thanks to all!
 

Attachments

  • 1.JPG
    1.JPG
    42.6 KB · Views: 365
  • 2.JPG
    2.JPG
    69.3 KB · Views: 319
Last edited:
I would start by loading the legacy firmware RT-AC88U_380.70_0 which is a completely different code base and doesn't have a lot of the "temperamental" features that were added later.

If the router is still unstable with that then I'd suggest it's a hardware issue.
 
Looking at the log, it looks like one of the radios isn't working at all. I'd guess it's the 2.4GHz radio.

I guess you could try unplugging the power cable whilst the on/off button is in the "on" position to drain any residual current, waiting a few minutes and trying again.

Have you got another power adapter you can try?
 
tried unplugging cable while router is on. no results at all.

regarding an extra power adapter, no i dont. i did measure it and shows an stable 19 volt reading but still i have bad feelings about it. could it definitely cause 2G radio not to work?
 
regarding an extra power adapter, no i dont. i did measure it and shows an stable 19 volt reading but still i have bad feelings about it. could it definitely cause 2G radio not to work?
To be honest I think the power adapter is a long shot. The radios tend to draw a quite a lot of power, so theoretically if the adapter was right on the edge of what it could deliver it might stop one of the radio working. But I think it's unlikely.
 
indeed. i believe that original power adapters dont usually fail.
as a matter of fact, i just tried with a 12V adapter and router behaves ok overall. still, 2G is dead
 

Sign Up For SNBForums Daily Digest

Get an update of what's new every day delivered to your mailbox. Sign up here!
Top